“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller asked the Mexican government to extradite Los Chapitos.
The United States said it wants to see more captures of drug traffickers and more fentanyl labs dismantled by Mexico as proof that collaboration against drug trafficking is working.
In his daily press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller also admitted that the U.S. has a drug demand problem that also needs to be addressed.
“We recognize that we have a demand problem in the United States and that we have to take steps to reduce it. At the same time, we have to take steps with our Mexican partners to combat trafficking and this includes destroying labs in Mexico and catching traffickers at the border and inside Mexico,” he said.
Miller said Joe Biden’s administration would like to see “progress” on all of these indicators.
The spokesman stressed that the United States and Mexico have “increased cooperation” against synthetic drugs and will continue to do so because fentanyl is the number one cause of death among U.S. youth.
The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, will travel to Mexico this Thursday to participate in the High Level Dialogue on Security between both governments.
At the center of the meetings will be the crisis of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that, according to Washington, is manufactured by Mexican cartels using chemicals purchased in China and then trafficked to the United States.
More than 70,000 people died last year in the United States from overdoses of this substance.
López Obrador insists, however, that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico, but arrives directly from the Asian giant, despite the fact that his government has dismantled several laboratories of this drug.
As a sign of cooperation, on September 15 the Mexican government approved the extradition to the United States of Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán, where he is accused of leading the Sinaloa Cartel and trafficking fentanyl.
The United States is now requesting the capture and extradition of Chapo’s other three sons, whom it calls the Chapitos.